The exploration of Japanese taste has been the subject of Kimpei Nakamura’s ceramic works for the past twenty years, resulting in a series of sculptures as episodes in this narrative. Nakamura, whose family background is in the production of the highly coloured ceramics of the Kutani tradition, reflects and parodies through his work the visual complexity of urban Japan and the ubiquity of popular culture that animates many aspects of its contemporary life.
His assemblages of cast industrial detritus, undefined forms garishly glazed with the colour palette of kabuki theatre, and replicas of rocks and twigs, are witty amalgams of the contradictory nature of Japanese cultural production. In An exploration of Japanese taste Nakamura links the descent of traditional ceramic traditions to kitsch, with the strict maintenance of the artificial replication of nature in Zen aesthetics of garden design and the tea ceremony.